The orchestrated power reforms claimed its first major casualty when former power minister, Professor Barth Nnaji resigned from office. A fortnight ago, the Presidency found itself reversing itself in the cancelled Manitoba Hydro International contract to run the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN). Last week, the same power reform claimed yet another top government official, the director general of the Bureau for Public Enterprises, the organisation handling the privatisation programme. SLEEK OSHARE writes that President Goodluck Jonathan should be appreciated for successes recorded in the power sector so far even with the successful sale of 11 distribution companies (Discos) to private investors.
Right from the time of late Bola Ige and Liyel Imoke, no one in the public sector could actually place a hand on the direction the power reform was going. The probes of the handling of the power sector reforms had mysteriously ended without conclusion and without any reports.
Huge sums of money highlighted to have been misapplied were no longer talked about. As usual, Nigerians, already used to such abracadabra in their public life and being the most tolerant and complacent peolpe in such matters in the world, went about their normal life. But now, with the unbundling of PHCN, which itself appeared like a fluke contraption arising from NEPA, has truly begun.
But then, let us look at some of the issues involved in government’s desire to reform the power sector...
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